Land clearing in Westmoreland, TN

A town on the divide

At about 925 feet, Westmoreland stands up on the Highland Rim, right on a divide. Water that gets away to the north works into Dutch Creek, then the Middle Fork of Drakes Creek, and leaves the state for the Barren River in Kentucky. A mile or two south of town the ground tips the other way, and Bledsoe Creek takes it down to Old Hickory Lake. This is headwater country. No wide bottoms. Ridge crowns, short steep hollows, and the seeps at the head of them.

Chert on top, wet ground below

Under the Rim it’s bedded chert and limestone, and chert is the part you feel. It weathers out as loose gravel, so a ridge field runs thin and rocky while Gregory Hollow or Pearson Hollow below it holds water into late spring. That’s two different jobs on one farm. Up top the head rides a little higher and the teeth pay for the rock. Down in the hollow it comes down to picking a week the ground will carry weight.

Small farms, not subdivisions

Around Bledsoe and Bransford, and over the Macon County line at Siloam, it’s family acreage. Pasture and hay on the flat, hardwood down the sides of the hollows. Tobacco and livestock built this end of Sumner County, and plenty of it is still fenced. When a place stops carrying stock, the hillside is what goes first. Briars take the fence line, and young hardwood walks downhill off the timber into the pasture. Ground like that wants the field on top opened back up and a way down into the hollow.

Twenty-six miles, straight north

US 231 runs near enough due north out of Lebanon, past Hunters Point, over the Cumberland and across Trousdale County, then climbs out onto the Rim. SR 52 comes in from Portland and runs east into Macon County. Shaun would rather walk a place first and tell you which piece is worth doing and which piece isn’t than sell you a whole hillside.